Henry M. Mathews

Who was Henry M. Mathews?

Henry Mason Mathews was the 7th Attorney General and 5th Governor of West Virginia. He was the first ex-Confederate elected to a governorship in the United States, and his election has been regarded as beginning of the era of the Bourbon Democrat.

Born in Frankford, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, he received an A.M. from the University of Virginia and B.L. from Lexington Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1857 and practiced law for several years before the outbreak of the American Civil War. He was commissioned major in the Confederate States Army and served throughout the Vicksburg Campaign.

He entered politics after the war and was elected to the West Virginia Senate in 1865 but was unable to serve due to state restrictions for ex-Confederates. When these restrictions were overturned in 1871, he was sent to the 1872 State Convention to rewrite the West Virginia State Constitution. The following year he was elected attorney general and, following one successful term, was elected governor of the state in 1877.

His election ushered in the quarter-century era of the Bourbon Democrat, the conservative, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party, who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags. He was identified as a Redeemer, the southern wing of the Bourbon faction. As governor, his administration sought resolution to the Long Depression, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, and issues of state debt. He was criticized for his handling of the Great Railroad Strike, which spread from West Virginia to several other states before he called for Federal support—an action his critics believed could have prevented the national strike if taken sooner. Mathews retired from politics at the end of his term in 1881. In later life he served as president of the White Sulfur Springs Company.